I'm a professional scavenger making a living selling curbside garbage. This blog details my finds and sales. It also acts as an archive for things beautiful and historic that would otherwise have been destroyed.

The radio guy tosses again!

A few weeks ago I mentioned a nice old Grundig radio I found on the curb in a nice part of town. I figured it was a one-off find, maybe someone deciding they didn’t want it taking up room in their garage or basement anymore.

However, to my surprise I spotted another beautiful radio while passing by the same house on my route last night. This one might be even better, depending on your personal taste of course.

It’s a old Philips radio that I guess would have been made in the 30s or 40s. It mostly made of wood and is finished with a nice veneer. The top is a bit scratched but overall it’s in great condition for its age.

The front dial is a bit of a linguistic mess, including phrases written in French, Dutch, and occasionally English. From what I can tell it plays FM, shortwave, and longwave, though I’m not exactly sure what the acronyms mean here. The absence of AM seems a bit odd.

The audio is terrific. As you’d expect the sound has that old-timey warmth to it.

The top also opens up to reveal a record player. It seems to be a bit finicky – you have to hold down the speed indicator for it to spin – but that’s something that’s probably easy enough to fix.

There are a few other issues. The FM tuning mostly works, but seems to miss out on the lower or higher stations. The shortwave and longwave tuners won’t go past the bottom 1/3 of range.

Regardless, it’s a beautiful and potentially valuable radio. Check out some of the prices realized by other old Philips tube radios. It might be worth putting a bit of money into to get it into top condition. I can’t figure out the exact model, so if anyone recognizes it let me know in the comments!

I’ll definitely keep an eye on this place to see if any more awesome radios appear!

Otherwise, I’ll show you a few other recent finds. I found some old tools in NDG; ….

… including a cool old metabo drill;

… a collection of “distressed” vintage dolls in Montreal West (which I left on the curb in front of my house for others to potentially save);

… a giant mirror that wouldn’t fit in the car in Mount Royal;

… a less giant mirror that did fit into the car from the same spot;

… and a shopping bag full of change (the glass jar is also filled with foreign coins) and a silver turtle bracelet in Mount Royal.

Wow, looks like that radio will net you some good pocket money! What a shame that you had to leave that mirror behind, it’s amazing! I hope someone else managed to pick it up before the garbage man or vandals got to it.

Yeah, I hope someone else got it. Someone probably paid big bucks for it originally, and I could likely have easily flipped it for at least 100$ and probably more. My friend said that I should have gotten a taxi to come pick it up, and maybe she was right.

Does the radio really tune shortwave? I can’t tell. Longwave was long the broadcast band in Europe. All those locations are where you are supposed to be able to tune in specific cities, remember Europe tended to have national broadcasters like the BBC, commercial stations are more recent. So knowing “London” was at one place on the dial was more important than the frequency or station. If there is a shortwave band, it’s the same case, tune over here for Amsterdam, getting the contents was the key with a radio like this.

I would have assumed it was made in the fifites, except FM took a long time to become popular. In the early sixties, it was a money loser, the domain of classical music. So FM wasn’t so common until towards the end of the sixties. But the radio looks earlier.

Just because sellers on ebay want a certain price doesn’t mean they’ll get it. Nowadays people can just look up prices, they don’t have to know the item or evaluate the item. This is a relatively generic item, I don’t think many would play their records today on that turntable. So the value is mostly to someone who wants that model specifically, like someone who knew the radio as a kid and wants one now. Shipping will be a big cost and issue, if you don’t pack it right, it will get damaged, and the size and weight will mean expensive shipping. That will balance against the price paid, unless you can find a local buyer (but then that limits demand).

I don’t think Joe Average is going to pay much, and then you have to be careful. “Fixing it up” may mean doing electronic work on it, and cosmetic work may be fussy. Collectors either want to buy cheap and do the work themselves or expect certain standards. Some can be quite fussy, taking the old components, taking out the “filling” and putting new parts inside, so it looks like it just came from the factory. So “fixing it up” may not improve the return.

Does the drill have drill bits in the handle? My dad had one similar when I was a kid and I was fascinated with the drill bits in the handle as they couldn’t get lost in the drawer where he kept it.

I envy you the ability to go curbside and find things. We have large garbage and recycle cans and everything must go in them to be collected. Unless you’re willing to open the cans and hunt thru them, or find a home with a ‘bulk pickup’, which has to be scheduled and isn’t on garbage day, you’re out of luck. The cans, by the way, are about my shoulder height, I’m 5′ tall, and on wheels.

Regarding the radio… I thought I’d try to identify the model so I headed over to google. A few hours later having seen literally thousands of images of Philips radios & I was surprised I couldn’t track down what model it is. Makes me think it is a fairly rare model and therefore potentially more valuable to a collector! There does seem to be a very active community of collectors of such radios. (Some people have hundreds in their collections). From what I saw in my research I’d be tempted to say it is from the 1960’s.

Is there a model number on the back? That would help tremendously in finding out more about the model.

Apparently it was made in 1957 (I figured it was earlier, live and learn I guess). You might be right about it maybe being relatively rare and potentially more collectible, though it’s hard to tell with these things sometimes. I can’t find any other mentions of this model…

Love those old radios. You might want to stop by Radio Hovsep, 5945 ave. du Parc. Phone: 514-274-0589. Apparently the place has old radio tubes, transistors, headphones, needles, cartridges, etc. … and may be able to give you some insight into your vintage radios. (FYI: found the reference here http://smartshoppingmontreal.com/qa.php)

I find good treasures in Shaughnessy Village on Bailie Street,Tupper,Sussex,St.Marc,Hope street etc.Look in those plastic recycling and trash bins with lids on top.I found board games,vintage postcards,20-cent beer bottles and almost-new shirts there recently.Worth looking into.

I do those streets on occasion when I happen to be in the area. I like them, but they’re kind of a hassle to get to being that they’re right downtown. Also, there’s a lot of other pickers to contend with!

In Ville St.Laurent on Montpelier boulevard and Muir street just off Cote-Vertu there are many high-rise condo buildings.Inside the plastic trash bins and plastic recycling bins with lids there are treasures waiting to be found.Check out these two streets and their trash when you are in the burgh.

We’re nearly neighbours – I’m in Ottawa.
Great finds, hope you do well with them. You are right – your blog not only details your finds but is an archive of sorts. I’ll be sharing it (your blog) and some of your eBay merchandise around my social media network; the pictures in your store are great and your items interesting.

I love the kind of work you do and urge others to do the same.I am a part-time scavenger,window washer ,male escort and live life on the fringes.You do great work for the environment,and I scavenge too for antiques,furniture and cans.I also do escorting and massaging;many career counselors and government officials as well as many in the middle class do not approve of scavenging,escorting,etc as careers.But I love,love this kind of work.Career counselors strongly discourage scavenging.My escort ads on Craigslist keep getting flagged,but some other escorts on Craigslist in Montreal keep putting explicit ads on Craigslist openly.Why ban consensual acts between adults?